Observe, Investigate, Understand

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Q: Maybe I can come to control myself, but shall I be able to deal with the chaos in the world?

M: There is no chaos in the world, except the chaos which your mind creates. It is self-created in the sense that at its very centre is the false idea of oneself as a thing different and separate from other things. In reality, you are not a thing, nor separate. You are the infinite potentiality; the inexhaustible possibility. Because you are, all can be. The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become.

Q: I find that I am totally motivated by desire for pleasure and fear of pain. However noble my desire and justified my fear, pleasure and pain are the two poles between which my life oscillates.

M: Go to the source of both pain and pleasure, of desire and fear. Observe, investigate, try to understand.

Q: Desire and fear both are feelings caused by physical or mental factors. They are there, easily observable. But why are they there? Why do I desire pleasure and fear pain?

M: Pleasure and pain are states of mind. As long as you think you are the mind, or rather, the body-mind, you are bound to raise such questions.

Q: And when I  realize that I am not the body, shall I be free from desire and fear?

M: As long as there is a body and a mind to protect the body, attractions and repulsions will operate. They will be there, out in the field of events, but will not concern you. The focus of your attention will be elsewhere. You will not be distracted.

Q: Still they will be there. Will one never be completely free?

M: You are completely free even now. What you call destiny (karma) is but the result of your own will to live. How strong is this will you can judge by the universal horror of death.

Q: People die willingly quite often.

M: Only when the alternative is worse than death. But such readiness to die flows from the same source as the will to live, a source deeper even than life itself. To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither living nor not-living. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time. Once the illusion that the body-mind is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living.